


Origami

by lionessvalenti



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal Caffrey had sent Peter a lot of gifts over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Origami

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by lefaym.

Neal Caffrey had sent Peter a lot of gifts over the years. Most of them seemed completely random (the porcelain Siamese cat, the Roomba), but others were clues. The year's subscription to the salsa of the month club was followed by the theft of a Coronel painting from a museum in Mexico, and Peter couldn't even do anything about it. It had Caffrey's name all over it.

Peter knew when he was being mocked. Elizabeth, however, appreciated the free salsa.

Caffrey sent Peter flowers on Valentine's Day every damn year. Never roses or anything predictable, but extravagant arrangements of orchids and birds of paradise. They were beautiful, and Elizabeth insisted on keeping them until they wilted. Maybe she thought Peter wanted to keep them, but wouldn't admit to it. Maybe he did.

When Peter and Elizabeth bought their house, Caffrey sent a set of very tasteful black candle holders with a note, _Happy housewarming_. It was unreal that Caffrey knew their address when they had only lived there a week, but Peter was actually getting used to this sort of thing from him. He told Elizabeth to find someplace nice for the candle holders.

Then there were the origami creations. These weren't sent to Peter's home, but left for him to find. Never crime scenes, or anyplace that would result in them being locked up in evidence. He left them in hotel rooms, apartments, bus station lockers. They weren't clues, but mementos for Peter to mark every job where Caffrey was one step ahead of him.

On the day Peter arrested Neal, after it was all said and done, he went up to the hotel room where Neal and Kate had been staying. They had been leaving when Peter caught up to them, and sure enough, on the bed, nestled in the rumpled sheets was an elephant made from a one dollar bill.

Peter picked it up and laughed to himself. Bastard forged thousands of dollars in bonds and he couldn't spring for a twenty?

He slipped the elephant into his pocket. Later that night, after he got home, after he told Elizabeth about the day, he went upstairs and pulled the shoe box out from the back of his closet and dumped it out on the bed. There they were. Three years worth of near misses represented in paper frogs and cats. He had the entire zoo. He had a garden of origami roses and tulips. He had various three-dimensional boxes done in different sizes and colors, and stars done on metallic paper.

He never told Elizabeth about them. These were his one secret with Neal Caffrey. He put them back in the box, and adding the elephant. The last one.

For the next four years, Peter would go weeks and months without thinking about them. Sometimes, when he did (around his birthday, usually, when he would receive a card from Neal), he pulled out the box and looked over the origami pieces. They really were beautiful. Little works of art all on their own. It left a bad taste in Peter's mouth, knowing that someone who was as brilliant and talented as Caffrey was sitting in a prison, no matter how much he deserved to be there.

That was one of the reasons Peter agreed to releasing Neal from prison after catching him the second time.

The first time Neal came to his house was to show Peter the signature in the Spanish Victory Bond. The second time Neal came over, the visit was longer, and that was when Neal spotted the candle holders in the dining room. He looked to Peter with raised eyebrows and a smile. Peter shrugged and said, "Better than the salsa of the month club."

"And here I thought that was a great gift," Neal replied. "Don't tell me you didn't have a year's worth of fantastic nachos."

A few weeks later, when they were on stakeout outside the Gansevoort, Neal set the paper crane on the dashboard.

"That's for you," he said, and climbed out of the car.

Peter swallowed his mouthful of deviled ham, picked up his coffee in one hand, and the crane in the other. He looked at it for a moment and realized that he didn't have one of those. Out of all the animals, flowers, and geometric shapes he had sitting in a box in his closet, he didn't have a single crane.

The crane stayed in the car for a few days, until the case was over. When he arrived home, he took it inside. He thought about the box, all the beautiful art hidden away. The crane wasn't even Neal's best work in origami. However, instead of putting it away, he set it on the bookshelf in the living room, next to the fireplace.

"What's that?" Elizabeth asked, coming up behind him. She wrapped her arms around him and set her chin on his shoulder.

"Neal made it," Peter replied, trying to sound like it was no big deal. "He left it in the car."

"Oh, well, I like it," she replied. He didn't have to be looking at her to know that she was smiling.

He nodded. "Me too."


End file.
